Data storage systems are arrangements of hardware and software that include one or more storage processors coupled to arrays of non-volatile storage devices, such as magnetic disk drives, electronic flash drives, and/or optical drives, for example. The storage processors service storage requests, arriving from host machines (“hosts”), which specify files or other data elements to be written, read, created, or deleted, for example. Software running on the storage processors manages incoming storage requests and performs various data processing tasks to organize and secure the data elements stored on the non-volatile storage devices.
Data storage systems commonly store data objects, such as LUNs (Logical UNits), file systems, virtual machine disks, and/or other types of objects, which the data storage systems make accessible to hosts for reading and/or writing. In one arrangement, a data storage system implements data objects as files that are stored within internal file systems. In an example, each internal file system stores one file that implements a production version of a data object and other files that implement snaps (point-in-time versions) of that data object. The data storage system may provide multiple internal file systems to support multiple production objects and their respective snaps.